Sunday, June 27, 2021

LEFFtovers: Indian Rice Con

Egg white omelet with leftover parantha (from Bengali Sweet Shop in the burdgeoning Indian cluster of Hicksville, Long Island, which is totally not Bengali, but also not Gujurati despite their impersonation attempt with shiny displays of fried snacky stuff and nuts. Spend enough time among actual Gujuratis and you can't be conned).
It dawns on me that you've seen 5000 of these egg white omelets from me, and I've never revealed my lazy-but-successful method. Preheat a small omelet pan to medium.
Like most people, I used 10" omelet pans for years, but I've switched to 8" (this one, sometimes marked down to <$20 at Walmart) for eggs. The size means it's filled to exactly the correct thickness by three eggs, so you don't actually need to do anything with them.
Drizzle 1 TBS olive oil in the pan (use butter if it won't kill you, you lucky bastard), sprinkle salt and grind pepper into the pan (this is one of my quirks...I season pans, not food). Add egg whites. Let cook, don't touch. Once there's very little runny liquid atop the egg, flip the omelet (take ten damned minutes sometime and learn how to do this like a real chef, with a flick of your wrist. As with knife skills, it's insane that people don't make the minor effort). Reduce heat and go attend to the other meal elements. If you've timed it poorly, you can cut the heat to the pan, though crunchiness is not a bad thing. And that's it. That's the big trick to egg whites, which most people serve like mucous.
I reheated the leftover paranthas on a cast iron comal/griddle. One was stuffed with potatoes and onions. The other one appeared on-menu as "rice". Too smart for my own good, I had visions of a whole other class of parantha made from rice flour rather than wheat. More of a rava dosa experience than a masala dosa experience. Then they served the damned thing, and, yup...


2 comments:

  1. What is the green fuzzy-looking bit approx 1" left and up from the tomato?

    ReplyDelete
  2. You mean Stage Left?

    Just a chunk of pepper.

    ReplyDelete